I am back from my brief jaunt to lovely Los Angeles, tanned and relaxed after my stay at the newly renovated Sunset Marquis Hotel. I spent lots of quality time with Kelly Cutrone and attended the hotel's champagne-soaked bash for the "Gibson Through the Lens" photo exhibit.

August 03, 2008

About a week-and-a-half ago, my friend Christine took me to see Beaut perform at The Slipper Room on Orchard Street and I've finally had time to post some of the shots I took. Beaut is singer/performer Marti Domination with musical accompaniment by Paul "Twinkle" Arfield of NYC Victorian punk band Stiffs, Inc. I've known Marti since back in the early '90s when I saw her perform often at Jackie 60. Her performance with Beaut was absolutely sublime: minimalist, hallucinatory, and hypnotic. Sometimes Marti sang dreamy, stripped-down renditions of Velvet Underground songs, and sometimes she just performed a series of cryptic pantomimes that seemed to combine slow-motion French can-can with interpretative dance.

Above: Christine and Marti before the show

Marti's lobster dance, which read as an homage to Salvador Dali's "Lobster Telephone," was especially zeitgeisty: The Museum of Modern Art currently has a fantastic Dali show up now (which I saw when it was in previews and which features a stunning backdrop from Hitchcock's "Spellbound"). She also dedicated a song to The Marx Brothers (I think. I was a bit tipsy) which also read as a nod to Dali--the Spanish artist worshiped Harpo Marx and once gave him a harp strung with barbed wire as a gift. It was fitting that, besides Christine and I, the only people who stuck around for Beaut's second set was a group of enthusiastic scenesters from Mexico. After all, Andre Breton once declared Mexico City "the last surrealist city in the world."

Beaut is playing a big show at the Spiegeltent in New York City on Friday, October 17--mark your calender! You won't want to miss this one.